Paul Ryan characterizes the tax as a “job-killing tax on family-owned farms and small businesses.” But the data on who pays the estate tax paints a very different picture. For starters, the tax only kicks in on individuals with estates valued at more than $5.5 million – $11 million for married couples. Most people – as in more than 99.5 percent of people – don’t pass away with that much in assets.

Talking points distributed by House Republicans last week promise “immediate relief from the Death Tax,” which will help “family-owned businesses and family farms continue into the future by ensuring they will no longer face double or even triple taxation when small business owners pass down their life’s work to the next generation.”

Paul D. Ryan characterizes the tax as a “job-killing tax on family-owned farms and small businesses.” In September, President Donald Trump said that “ending the crushing, the horrible, the unfair estate tax” would “protect millions of small businesses and the American farmer.”

But the data on who pays the estate tax paints a very different picture. For starters, the tax only kicks in on individuals with estates valued at more than $5.5 million – $11 million for married couples. Most people – as in more than 99.5 percent of people – don’t pass away with that much in assets.

And because of various deductions, write-offs and credits in the tax code, more than half of the individuals who do end up paying exactly zero estate tax. Among other things, they can deduct various expenses, mortgages and bequests to surviving spouses to whittle down their taxable income. They can donate some of their estate to charity, or they can shield their earnings via more complicated maneuvers, like placing them in trusts.

When you zero all that out you end up with a total of 5,460 individuals owing estate tax this year, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center – 0.2 percent of all decedents.

The rhetoric from estate tax critics might lead you to conclude that all or most of those 5,460 estates are from family farms or small businesses. But the Tax Policy Center’s analysis says that’s very far from the truth.

The Tax Policy Center defines a “business” or “farm” estate as one whose business or farm assets account for over half the value of the total estate. It then rather generously defines “small” as any estate in which those assets total no more than $5 million.

That means, then, that a small business or farm estate is valued at between $5 million and $10 million – we’re talking about the richest of the rich here.

By that definition there are a total of 80 “small” businesses or small farms paying the estate tax each year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Small businesses and farms, in other words, account for roughly 1 percent of all estates that owe any estate tax.

Still, you might make the case that on principle, the estate tax is unfair to these farms and businesses, however few of them there are. The maximum estate tax rate is 40 percent, after all. If Dad passes away, leaving is $5.5 million farm to you, that means you have to sell off 40 percent of it to pay Uncle Sam, right?

Well, no. There’s a huge difference between the maximum estate tax rate and the effective rate people actually end up paying. The 40 percent rate only kicks in on a value above the $5.5 million threshold. If Dad’s farm is valued at $5,500,001, that means your tax bill when you inherit the farm will be a total of 40 cents – assuming you find not a single deduction.

Returning to the Tax Policy Center’s numbers, the 80 small business and farm estates subject to the estate tax this year will owe a total of $30 million to the federal government. Split that up 80 ways and you get a rough average tax bill of $375,000.

That works out to an effective tax rate of about 3.75 percent for a farm valued at $10 million – about the top end of the estate size that TPC would consider a small farm or business.

Still! You might protest that many farms and small businesses run on tight margins, and that a sudden $375,000 tax bill could prove to be ruinous. But as it turns out, estates facing a tax bill have the option to pay it off over a period of 15 years, softening its impact.

If anyone knows the value of hard work, it’s farmers and small business owners – including the successful few who end up paying a modest estate tax each year.

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